


Lift Fire

by Gigi_Sinclair



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Trapped In Elevator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:33:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23233279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gigi_Sinclair/pseuds/Gigi_Sinclair
Summary: "Tom doesn't speak, either, until there's a strange grinding groan, the lights flicker, and the lift shudders to an unexpected stop.Oh, you have to be joking, Edward thinks, as Tom says, 'I'd heard they'd been having some problems with this one.'"
Relationships: Thomas Jopson/Lt Edward Little
Comments: 12
Kudos: 53
Collections: Lock Down Fest, The Terror Bingo (2019)





	Lift Fire

**Author's Note:**

> For The Terror Bingo square "trapped in an elevator", and the Lock Down Fest prompt "stuck/trapped in together." (Not quarantine-related in any way.)
> 
> "Lift fire" is a military term sometimes used as a synonym for "cease fire", but which actually means raising fire so friendly forces can move beneath it.

“Hold the door, please!” 

As soon as he recognizes the voice, Edward's instinct is to push the “door close” button, but he is not a bastard. Not completely, anyway. He obediently sticks a hand between the lift doors. Thomas Jopson jogs up, laptop bag slung over his shoulder. 

“Thanks.” Tom doesn't look at him. Edward mumbles a, “Not at all,” and pushes the button for the ground floor. 

The trip seems to take much longer than usual. With anybody else, Edward would have made a comment. “Working late?” or “How are things?” Something banal but socially necessary. With Tom, he says nothing. He just stands, his head suddenly aching, as the floors count down. 

Tom doesn't speak, either, until there's a strange grinding groan, the lights flicker, and the lift shudders to an unexpected stop. _Oh, you have to be joking_ , Edward thinks, as Tom says, “I'd heard they'd been having some problems with this one.”

Experimentally, Edward pokes at the “door open” button. Nothing happens. He taps the other buttons, also to no avail. 

“I guess we have to call somebody,” Tom says. 

For the first time in his life, Edward opens the panel beneath the lift buttons and picks up the emergency phone. He hears nothing. “It's dead.” He pushes the button beside it, the one with a picture of a bell. Again, nothing happens. 

“Really?” Tom reaches past him, close enough for Edward to smell him. Even after a very long day at the office, he smells fantastic, which, irrationally, only serves to make Edward crosser. 

“You can trust me,” he snaps, even as Tom picks up the phone himself. 

“I didn't say I couldn't.” Tom puts down the telephone receiver and reaches into his pocket. He puts his mobile to his ear, then says, “The reception in this building is always terrible.” He glances up. “Want to try yours?” It's not condescending. Tom has never been condescending in his life, but Edward still grits his teeth as he looks at his mobile. There's nothing, of course. Panic begins to grow within him. With a couple of deep breaths, it's manageable, for now, but Edward knows himself. Left unchecked, things can very quickly spiral out of control. 

“What do we do now?” He snaps. 

“Don't worry, Ed.” Tom's tone, by contrast, is calm, reassuring. He's always good in a crisis. The opposite of Edward. “Maybe we could...” He puts down his bag and tries to pull open the doors manually. Edward helps, but the doors don't budge. After a moment, Tom steps back, wiping his hands on the back of his finely tailored trousers. “Have you seen Billy lately?” 

Edward shakes his head. “He's usually got his earbuds in, anyway.” Even if he is nearby, Edward doubts the night caretaker would hear them shouting. 

Tom lets out a sigh, then glances at his Rolex. A thirtieth birthday gift from Frank, if Edward remembers rightly. “Well, the good news is, it's already midnight. Mr. Crozier is always in by seven, at the latest.” 

“Great.” So seven hours in an enclosed space with Tom. At one time, that would have been a dream. Now, it's a nightmare. 

Tom no doubt feels the same, but he says nothing. He takes off his jacket, places it carefully on the floor, and sits with his back to the lift wall. “If you don't mind,” he says, unzipping his laptop bag, “I suppose I'll get some more work done.” 

Edward doesn't know why he's bothering to ask. “Go ahead.” 

After ten minutes of silence, save for the tapping of Tom's keyboard, Edward tries the emergency phone again, then presses all of the buttons aggressively. Predictably, the lift doesn't move. He looks up at the panels in the ceiling. Maybe if one of them climbed up and got onto the roof of the lift...

“This happened to me once before,” Tom says, without looking up from his screen. “At uni. I was stuck in a lift for two hours by myself.” _By myself sounds great._ Edward could live with “by myself.” 

“Maybe one of us should try and get out.” Edward points to the ceiling. 

Now, Tom glances up, eyebrows raised. “And do what?” 

“I don't know,” Edward admits.

“Seems safer to wait here, I think.”

“You're probably right.” Edward crosses the lift to sit as far from Tom as he can get in a six foot by six foot box. He wishes he had his own laptop with him. Since he doesn't, he pulls out his phone. He runs through three levels of some mind-numbing word game he can't even remember downloading, and is about to start on a fourth when Tom asks, “Are you hungry?” 

He is, a bit. Edward stopped for supper, a frozen meal he reheated in the staff microwave, but that seems a long time ago now. It is a long time ago. 

Without waiting for an answer, Tom reaches into his bag and tosses over a Mars bar. “Still your favourite, right?” 

“Yeah.” Edward looks at the chocolate. Tom doesn't eat it much himself. Edward knows his vice of choice is crisps, specifically Walker's cheese and onion. “But you don't have to...”

“It's fine.” His cheeks turn pink, in the way Tom hates but which Edward always found so attractive. He used to make a game of it, of seeing how red he could make Tom blush. By the time they broke up, Edward was an expert. “I bought it for you. A while ago.” Months ago, probably. “Forgot to take it out of my bag.” 

“Right.” Edward swallows. He should say something more, but he doesn't know what. That's always been the trouble. He doesn't know how to explain himself to Tom. He doesn't know how to apologize in a way that will make Tom understand just how sorry he is about what happened. “Thanks.” Unsure what else to do, Edward unwraps the chocolate bar and takes a bite. 

“There's a jumper of yours at my place,” Tom says, as Edward chews. “The grey stripy one. Sorry I haven't brought it in, it keeps slipping my mind.” 

“No rush.” Edward hadn't even noticed it missing. 

Silence. Edward turns back to his phone. Forty-five percent battery life, and it's barely half-past midnight. 

Even though it's unlikely Billy will hear him, Edward considers screaming, just for the hell of it. Instead, he finishes the Mars bar, crumples the wrapper and shoves it into his pocket. 

“I miss you,” Tom says, so quietly Edward is at first sure he misheard him over the scrunching. Then Tom looks up, fury in his beautiful blue eyes, and Edward is certain he didn't mishear anything at all. 

He wants to do this, apparently. Get into it here and now, where there is no chance of escape for either of them. No chance of escape for Edward, that is. He's the one who's spent weeks avoiding Tom, and specifically avoiding being alone with Tom. “I am very angry about what you did,” Tom continues, as if Edward could forget it. “But I do miss you.” 

“We see each other every day at work.” Edward knows it's the wrong thing to say even before he finishes speaking. Tom frowns at his laptop. 

Edward should keep his mouth shut. He's already caused more than enough trouble. Still, he hears himself say, “I miss you, too. I know I don't have any right to say it.” 

“You can say it if it's true.” 

It is true. Edward misses Tom in his flat, in his bed, in his life. He wasn't just a boyfriend or a partner. He was family. They'd only been together for a few months, but Edward would have moved in with Tom in a heartbeat. Would have _married_ him in a heartbeat. And it's completely Edward's fault that will never happen. 

Everything fell apart when Frank Crozier, the company president and Tom's personal hero-cum-surrogate father, was forced to take a leave of absence to deal with allegations of criminal harassment from a former employee. The accusations were ludicrous. Everyone knew it, but Frank wanted the whole thing to be meticulously above board. He left Edward in charge while he was away. It wasn't the ideal situation—Edward wasn't ready to run an entire company, and didn't want to—but with the indispensable Tom by his side, Edward thought he could handle it. 

He couldn't. Frank was barely out the door before the head of HR, Dundy Le Vesconte, brought up the staffing reduction plan he'd been pushing for a while. Frank never wanted layoffs, and didn't think they were necessary. Edward reminded Le Vesconte of that, but he went behind Edward's back to present the plan to the board of directors. They took a vote on a decision that should have been Edward's alone. After that, there was nothing Edward could do. 

Nothing he'd felt able to do, in any case. He watched helplessly as a dozen of his coworkers, including Tom, packed up their desks. 

“I'm sorry,” Edward says, sitting on the floor of the stalled lift. He's said it before, of course. Over and over. When Tom lost his job, when he and Edward fought about it afterwards, when Tom kicked Edward out of his flat and told him he never wanted to see him again.

He did, though. Tom came back to work when Frank returned, along with the others Le Vesconte had fired who hadn't already found other employment. 

“I'm the worst kind of sorry,” Edward said to Frank.

All Frank said was, “I know,” with a sympathetic smile that managed to be more devastating than any show of temper would have been.

Le Vesconte was gone by the end of the week. 

“I should have done more,” Edward admits, staring at the panel of useless buttons, and the even more useless telephone receiver, in front of him. “Fought harder. I shouldn't have let Le Vesconte win. I shouldn't have given up.” 

For a long moment, Tom looks at him. Then, he says, “You were in a very difficult position.” It's the closest thing to forgiveness Tom has ever offered him. Edward doesn't deserve it.

“It wouldn't have happened if you were in charge.” Tom would have stood up to Le Vesconte, and the board of directors. He would have won. “You're not like me.” 

A pause. There's a sound of shuffling, and Edward looks up to see Tom moving across the lift. “Maybe not.” Tom sits beside him. “But maybe that's a good thing. I could never be with a guy like me. He'd drive me insane.”

Edward's stomach flips. 

If he had the choice, he would run. That's what he always does: run, hide, fall to pieces whenever anything gets remotely difficult. But there's nowhere to go, and he has no choice but to stay here and face it. Face Tom. 

He gathers his courage, breathes in and out, and takes the leap. 

“I love you,” Edward says. It's an understatement. “Always. But I wouldn't blame you if you can never forgive me.” 

Tom's eyes flick up, then down. He searches Edward's face, but he makes no move.

Edward doesn't believe in fate, but maybe this is an opportunity. A chance to show Tom he _can_ be brave, he can rise to the occasion. That Tom still means everything to him, and always will.

His heart hammering, Edward leans in, closing the distance to press his lips lightly against Tom's. 

“Hey!” A voice breaks in, echoing from higher in the shaft. Tom pulls back, but his cheeks are flushed even deeper than usual. To Edward's silent glee, he reaches over and rests a hand on Edward's thigh. 

“Billy?” Tom calls back. “Is that you?”

“Tom? Are you stuck in there?” Billy yells, perceptive as always. 

“Yes!” Tom rolls his eyes. “Edward's with me. Can you get help?” 

“I'll call someone.” 

“That was lucky.” Edward's not sure what else to say. 

But Tom just smiles. “Very lucky.” His tongue darts out, wetting his bottom lip. “Of course, knowing Billy, it will be a while before anyone gets here.” He raises an eyebrow suggestively. Edward laughs, from amazement and from pure, unadulterated joy, and pulls Tom close. 

***

It's nearly half-past one in the morning when Frank Crozier gets the call about an incident at the office building. He makes his way there at once, to find the fire brigade and the lift service company on site. It takes half an hour of clanging and cranking and working with various wires and switches, but eventually, the lift doors shudder open, and Edward and Tom emerge on the ground floor. Tom looks more dishevelled than Frank has ever seen him, his hair in disarray and his shirt obviously hastily tucked back into his pants. Edward is in a similar, surprisingly sloppy, state. 

“My God!” Frank exclaims. “What a thing to happen! Are you all right?” 

“We're fine,” Tom says. That's to be expected. Frank's never heard the man complain, ever. But there's been some bad blood between Tom and Edward lately, which Frank can understand after the incident with the layoffs. He eyes them both. 

“You're sure?” 

“Just rather tired. Are we allowed to go?” Frank nods, although he doesn't know whether that's strictly up to him. “Would it be all right if we came in a little late tomorrow?” 

“Of course,” Frank says. “Take the day off, for God's sake.” 

Tom shakes his head. “That's not necessary, thank you. I'll be in for your meeting with Sir John at noon.” 

“Can I at least give you a ride home?” Frank offers. 

“I think we'll manage. Good night, Mr. Crozier.” 

“Frank,” Frank says. It's an old joke between them, but it makes Tom smile. 

“See you at noon, sir.” 

Edward nods, stiff as always, and the two of them walk off together.

Before Frank can speculate too much about what may have happened between them, a representative of the lift company approaches. 

“It'll take a day or so to get all the repairs done,” she says. “We'll have to talk with the two gentlemen, get them to sign some forms.”

“You can speak to them tomorrow afternoon.” 

If the woman is irritated by that, it doesn't show. “In the meantime,” she says, “I can extract the CCTV footage from the lift itself, if you want to see it.”

“No,” Frank replies. “I don't think I do, actually.” Nor, he decides, will he ever tell Edward or Tom that such footage exists. It seems far better for all concerned.

At the corner, Tom hails a passing cab. Frank watches through the glass doors of the building as it pulls up and they get in, Tom's hand holding tightly to Edward's. _Might be a good thing I didn't drink that bottle I was saving for their engagement_ , Frank thinks. If the smile he spies on Tom's face is anything to go by, there may yet be chance to use it for its intended purpose.


End file.
